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Wednesday, December 09, 2015

South Carolina ... Where It's Not The Heat, It's The Stupidty: Are We Really Gonna Spend Five Million Dollars On A Confederate Flag Display

Earlier this year, on the heels of that mass shooting at a church in Charleston, and after much heated debate on both sides, the state of South Carolina finally removed the Confederate flag from flying over the statehouse.

I’d have hoped the flag would have been tossed out with the garbage, but, yes, it is a part of history, both in this state and the country, so the plan was that the flag would be put on permanent display where those who worship it, and those who abhor it, might look at it.

State legislators agreed to display the flag at the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, and appointed a commission to come up with a proposal; the state budget office estimated the display could cost between $1 million and $15 million.

Wait. Fifteen million to display the flag in a museum? Well, luckily, that was the high estimate and now the commission has come up with a fee that state lawmakers — both Republicans and Democrats — find as offensive as many find the Confederate flag, and that proposal is that the state pay $5.3 million to display that flag in a state museum.

Never mind that the money could be used for our failing infrastructure, our failing educational systems, or even to help repair the state after the disastrous floods this fall, let’s pay five million dollars to display a flag. Oh, and that’s not all; the proposed exhibit will also cost $416,000 every single year to rent additional space to house it.

“Apparently, they’re [also] going to fly it around every day in a private jet.” — House Minority Leader, Democrat Todd Rutherford joked … kind of.

This five million dollars that we don’t actually have, would be used to display the flag taken from the statehouse grounds in a glass case, and on the wall behind it, a display of names of S.C. troops killed in the Civil War.

No. No. I suggest going to a local frame shop, getting a cheap plastic frame, and glass, I’m not a heathen, and slip the flag into the frame and put it on a back wall somewhere. Hell, I’d even cough up the thirty-five or so bucks I think it might cost.

I kid. I do think the flag needs to be displayed so we can remember where it came from, and what it means, on both sides, but is it seriously going to cost us five million bucks plus another half-a-million per year to do that when we have more pressing things to do with tax money?

We have the same problem over here; we have no money to help struggling poor families but can afford £100,000 per missile to bomb the Syrian civilian population. The people who make these decisions don't live in the real world.